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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27441811">Our Existence Has Been Forgotten (They Know Us By Another Name)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wedaredtoclaimthesky/pseuds/wedaredtoclaimthesky'>wedaredtoclaimthesky</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Body Modification, Clint Barton &amp; Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Feels, F/M, Fae &amp; Fairies, Fae Magic, Gen, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Immortality, Mythical Beings &amp; Creatures, Natasha Romanov &amp; Tony Stark Friendship, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, POV Alternating, Shapeshifting, Tony Stark Has A Heart, the magic is really open-ended, they just have powers okay</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 01:28:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,662</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27441811</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wedaredtoclaimthesky/pseuds/wedaredtoclaimthesky</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everyone who is supposed to be utterly human, is… not.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clint Barton &amp; Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton &amp; Natasha Romanov &amp; Tony Stark, Clint Barton &amp; Phil Coulson, Clint Barton &amp; Phil Coulson &amp; Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton &amp; Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov &amp; Tony Stark, Phil Coulson &amp; Tony Stark</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Clint</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The irony, of course, is beautiful. They see, and they think they know, but there is so much more they have simply missed. They see the Avengers, see the self-proclaimed “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” and think impossible things, think super-soldiers and gods from another world and matter-defying monsters in green, think magic. It is more true than they know, but not for those reasons.</p><p>~</p><p>No one looks twice at the archer, not even in SHIELD. No one spends an undue amount of time pondering over his chosen code name, his sense of otherness that makes him feel so different to the other agents. It is merely a part of Agent Barton, his flaunting of his unusual background, the way he likes being up high and loves the rush of death-defying drops. No one thinks about why.</p><p>When Clint is truly intent on something, he goes utterly still. He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t even seem to breathe. People who see it, who are asked to describe it, laugh uneasily. They say something about a sniper’s freeze, sniper’s calm. Some classification that includes humans, as if to remind themselves that he is one. It helps quiet the screaming in the back of their brains that this stillness is not natural, that that is the look of a predator examining prey. No one considers that their instincts are telling them that for a reason.</p><p>Both of his forearms are taken up by giant tattoos, a matching set of realistic wings that start at his wrists and extend their feathery tips just past his elbows in monochrome. Agents joke that they match his codename, ask if that’s why he got them or where the hawk bit came from. He’ll smile, laugh goodnaturedly with them. He does not answer, and the merriment doesn’t quite reach his face properly.</p><p>
  
</p><p>He looks at them, from time to time, and a deep sadness rises in his face. A longing for something out of reach.</p><p>Coulson asks him about them, calm and without urgency, one day after he has been his handler for a few years. And because Clint trusts him with his heart, which is worth infinitely more than his life, he gives him a true answer.</p><p>“I used to fly,” he says. “They’d turn me loose, inside the circus tent, and I would soar as high off the ground as I could get before they called me back. And then one day I found an escape, and I tore through the canvas walls, and the cool breeze through my feathers for the first time felt like freedom. I never wanted to be on the ground again.”</p><p>His gaze fixes, seeing some other time and place with those sharp eyes. “But there was no other choice for me, so when I came back down for good I went and got these done.”</p><p>“They’re in memoriam. Of what I gave up to be here,” he says, and Coulson believes him. He does not ask about them again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Natasha</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Natalia Romanova was taken very young, by the standards of her kind if not humans. That meant when the Red Room stole the ethereal dress they found her in and hid it far away, she knew that they had her loyalty until she could reclaim it but not what that meant for her.</p><p>They found her by a river, and with her better hearing she could hear what they said about her. They knew she was not quite human, could tell she was something other. They saw her blood-red hair (unusual for her kind) and assumed she was a rusalka, violent siren-like beings with a hatred of humans. They thought they could use her.</p><p>She was not a rusalka, but she did not correct them. Even young, she knew that it did not matter what they thought she was. She had to do what they wanted anyways.</p><p>It was the Cold War when Natalia was taken from her people. She was 30 years old and had the appearance and personality of a 6 year old human. The Red Room raised her with the other girls, and although she knew she was different her masters treated her as they did the others. She became the same as them, made herself age at the rate everyone else did.</p><p>The brainwashing took care of the cultural differences. She was careful to conceal exactly how many things she could do as she grew older that would be impossible for them.</p><p>She served the Red Room first, and then the KGB, violent and deadly and obedient the way they wanted her while gathering information all the while. She stopped physically aging at 24, and the decades slipped by like silk. She took the name Natasha.</p><p>The Red Room was known to have been experimenting with the super-soldier serum. No one questioned the Black Widow, who seemed eternally young and beautiful. One by one the people who brought her in died, until she believed there were none left who knew about her arrival.</p><p>And then SHIELD sends Hawkeye to kill her. They fight, and as he has her at his mercy he looks down the shaft of his arrow with his overly good eyes and says very calmly, “Who has compelled a vila to kill?”</p><p>It is the first time a human has noticed she is a fae without being told. He is also the only one out of all who know to see that she is not violent by nature.</p><p>Few things in the world have that power, and as Natasha gazes back at him she knows what he is in return.</p><p>“Retrieve my clothes and I will come with you,” she replies. They go to Budapest, and Natasha sees her magic dress for the first time since she was young. She expects Hawkeye to take it, to make sure her loyalty will be secure. Instead, he merely hands it to her.</p><p>“Fairies are not made to be commanded,” he replies when she asks why. She turns it into a belt and fastens it about her waist. She goes to SHIELD anyways.</p><p>He takes her to his superiors, where she is subjected to weeks of examinations, psychological analyses, and loyalty tests. They are kept apart for some time, until she has proven herself. She learns his name is Clint Barton.</p><p>Their first mission together is an unqualified success. In the aftermath, she approaches him where he has taken refuge on the roof of the hotel SHIELD provided for the night.</p><p>“You are a hawk,” she says. The birds are the only ones with eyes keen enough to see her kind as they truly are.</p><p>“I used to be,” he replies. “Not anymore.”</p><p>“Your shape does not dictate what you are,” she tells him. “Wings and feathers or not, you are still a hawk. You will always be a hawk. It is not something that can be stripped from you.”</p><p>He tips his head back to gaze at the sky. “I miss flying,” he tells her, and they sit together in silence for a while and stargaze. It is easy between them. Vile have always gotten along better with creatures from nature than with men.</p><p>He tells her his story over the missions together, in fits and starts. He was born in captivity, a circus hawk, he and his brother the only ones who hatched out of his parent’s clutch of eggs. They trained him to do his own act, to fly around the circus tent and grab targets as the falconer threw them while performing mid-air tricks. He was never allowed to fly outside, only inside the tent where the canvas walls forced him to land on the ground and made it possible for him to be re-captured.</p><p>But the tent was old and fraying, and one day he found a hole in the fabric and escaped through it, never to return.</p><p>“I used to have good eyes,” Clint tells her. “The set I have now can see only a fraction of my old ones. I was afraid of being enslaved again, so I searched and scanned the wild until I found a fae. I cut a deal with her, and I became a human.”</p><p>Natasha knows that to deal with any kind of fae, there must be an exchange. It is the rule that every species with even the slightest control over fae magic abides by. She does not ask Clint what he gave the fae in return.</p><p>Slowly he earns her trust. She does not need to earn his, because he trusted her from the start.</p><p>One day Natasha finds him gazing at the sky again in longing and rubbing at his tattoos. She reads the sadness and naked want in his eyes for something he will never experience again. “I want to make a deal with you,” she tells him. He snaps to attention with his laser focus. Deals with fairies are a matter to be taken seriously, even when they are your friends.</p><p>“I will change you between shapes whenever you desire it,” she says. “And in return, you will help me retrieve my robes if they are ever taken from me.”</p><p>“Done,” Clint replies without hesitation. They shake hands to seal the deal, and he tells her, “I would have done so anyway, without a deal.”</p><p>“I know,” Natasha responds. She does not say so, but this is her way of paying back the hawk who saved her from a lifetime of servitude. A deal that he can take, freely and without regrets.</p><p>They are assigned to many missions and many teams over their careers with SHIELD but work best with each other, alone as a pair. At night you can sometimes spot the silhouettes of two humans that climb to the roof of wherever Strike Team Delta is, before disappearing suddenly. The disappearance heralds the takeoff of a bird and a small winged figure that soar into the sky from the same spot.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>So, for some context on exactly what Natasha is, I pulled the idea of her being a vila from an Internet article. I don't make any claims as to how mythologically accurate it is, but I thought it kind of fit her.</p><p> <strong>https://mythology.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_Slavic_mythical_creatures#Vila</strong><br/></p><p>
  <em>"Vila (or Fairy) is a creature from Southern Slavic beliefs that is usually benign to humans. She is imagined as a very beautiful and eternally young girl with bird or butterfly wings, golden hair, white dress and armed with bow and arrows. By beliefs, her power was in her hair. She lives far from humans, in forests, close to lakes and rivers or in clouds. It is believed that Vila is born from dew, certain flowers or when a rainbow appears in the sky.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She could transform into any animal, especially falcon, wolf, swan or mare. She could be seen riding horses or elks in hunting, but very often could be seen dancing in a circle with other Vile. She could seduce heroes in fairytales or sometimes be their sisters-in-law, healing their wounds with various herbs that are created in battles. Human girls used to appease her for beauty or protection.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Vila hardly forgives insults and could kill the offender with her eyesight or bow and arrows. Even in cases when she causes evil things, she still remains beautiful and seductive. She can become loyal to a human by stealing her clothes or she can become an ordinary woman if somebody takes out her wings. It is believed that seeds of the garlic plant give her eternal youth.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>During times of the New Moon, she becomes similar to Rusalka and therefore dangerous to humans."</em>
</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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